WIBU re: couple hogging spare seat on plane

[eslteacher]

It's a trivial one, but whatever!

So DP and I took a 9 hour flight the other day. Tickets suggested we would have adjacent seats, but due to a weirdly out of synch aisle numbering system on the plane, we ended up being an aisle and a row apart on a plane set out like this:

ABC DEF HIJ

So he was in C and I was in D, but not on the same row. Could just about talk, but with much straining, shoulder-tapping and leaning backwards/forwards into the aisle, and with the noise of the plane and people coming down the aisle all the time it was all very awkard and uncomfortable.

Anyway, there was a couple in seats A and B on the same row as me (in D), but when the plane doors closed no one had sat in C. Perfect, I thought, DP can move into that seat. As I leant forward and said this to him, the man of the couple immediately moved onto the spare seat, and started piling their bags and coats onto the empty seat now bewteen them. The woman tapped me on the shoulder while I was mid sentence to DP, and said very firmly that they would be keeping the seat for themselves so as to be 'more comfortable' during the flight. I smiled and explained our predicament with the weird numbering and how we'd like to sit together, thinking they hadn't understood, but they just kept shrugging and broken recording me with 'no, we're keeping the seat so we can make ourselves more comfortable', while adding more and more of their stuff onto the spare seat.

At this point another random lady sitting in front on them got involved and told them they were being selfish, but they just blanked her, closed their eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

I wanted to get the air hostess involved, but DP (who reeeally hates arguments and is massively non confrontational) said he wouldn't be comfortable sitting next to them anyway now and he really didn't 't want to have to make a big scene to get the seat. So, much to my anger they ended up getting to keep their seat, while I was left to seeth with rage during the whole flight.

So anyway, since I had 9 boring hours to reflect on this I did wonder at one point if they had just as much right to the spare seat to be 'more comfortable' as we did for the purpose of sitting next to each other. AIBU in thinking they were selfish, or were they being no more selfish than us?

Free seat next to you on a flight is the next best thing to being upgraded. I've only once been asked for the free seat next to me. A woman approached just after the sealtbelt sign had gone out and said 'Mind if I sit here? My seat is back there with my husband but he's an arsehole and I might kill him if I have to spend the next 5 hours stuck beside him'. Couldn't refuse a request like that, could I?

Would always stand up for pg, elderly, infirm individual on a train/bus/tube. Think it's an entirely different thing really.

Welovegrapes - I actually have a colleague who is lovely in most ways yet refuses to stand for pregnant woman (she does for eldery/injured/disabled however). She has this weird 'you chose to get pregnant' thing...it's very strange as like I said she is generally really nice and kind in other ways. From some conversations we've had I think she actually has deep seated issues / fears relating to pregnancy and childbirth (doesn't plan on having any children naturally, but rather adopting) and it stems from this. Maybe she was the one, or someone like her, who refused to stand for you...in any case, I'm sorry to hear that it happened to you. I don't think that my plane issue is really as bad as that.

That sort of thing would never happen in first class.

They were being unreasonable - the cupboard type things above your heads are for coats etc, but perhaps they hadn't flown before, or were just thick and didn't realise that.

I would have involved the cabin crew, or moved their stuff to my DHs empty seat (empty after he'd moved to sit beside me, that is) and told them that unless they could prove they'd paid for that particular seat for their coats then the aforementioned garments would be sitting elsewhere. Then I would have joined them in their silly game of 'let's pretend we're asleep'.

One of the wonderful things about growing older is that you no longer put up with this sort of nonsense.

Why didn't you ask the person beside you in seat E to swap with your DH?

Or you swap with the person beside your DH?

Or you swap with the person across the ailse from your DH?

I suspect because it's more inconvenient for actual people to move rather than coats and bags (which should have been stowed anyway....)

They could have let your DH move, but they didn't have to. I think being with small children and on honeymoon are the only circumstances where you need to be seated together and others should move to help accommodate this.

I'm not convinced by all this "ask the cabin crew" stuff, though - they have a job to do beyond refereeing fairly juvenile disputes between passengers

No way would I give up all that space and squash myself into the middle seat just so that a couple I don't know could chat for 9 hours.

Sorry OP

YANBU, it's one thing to think 'yay we got a spare seat to stretch out in!', it's another thing entirely to deliberately turn down a perfectly reasonable request for someone to actually sit in the seat.

But then people are particularly selfish on piblic transport. We live on a prime London commuter route, and if I'm on my way to work on the train I always move seats if, for example I am sitting on my own in a double seat and a parent and kids get on the train. But whenever I do the same route with the kids, if the train is busy and there are just a few single seats dotted around people very rarely offer to move so me and the 2 kids (age 5 and 3) can sit together and I often end up with either the two of them balanced on my lap or my 5yo sat next to a stranger a few seats away.

montage - The people in seats E and F were a couple, and indeed all the other people sat around us were sat together with their families/friends. No basis to ask them to move.

There were some people in the same position as us, ie one aisle over and up from their travel companion due to the weird row numbering. Some of these people seemed to have worked out swaps where possible.

Sir Chenjin, DP would have had to actually sit on them, seeing as they bodily took the spare seat themselves and moved their stuff into the middle. But that could have been amusing to see.

Well after doing a brief tally of the thread, it seems pretty evenly split between 'they were being selfish and U" and 'you were being selfish and U'. So I don't know what to take from this really.

I don't get the whole 'squashing myself in' thing - they still had a seat each!

The coats and bags should have been stowed, and I'm really surprised the cabin crew didn't enforce this on take off.

Dont know who you were flying with but virgin do a thing called seat plus where you can buy an empty seat for a much reduced price to make things a bit more comfy.

So it might have been their seat after all!

In that case I would definitely have got the cabin crew involved Riverboat - people take priority over coats and bags every time! I'd then have spent the next 9 hours telling them all about my children, pets, bowel problems and so on, just to be extra friendly

So many replies saying that both couples wanted the spare seat and they got there first so all is fair...

But it's not an equal claim - it's a SEAT, for an arse, that's what it's for!

I always do a little internal yippee if I get a free seat next to me but I would never object to someone sitting there, I haven't paid for it so I'd look a proper tool trying to dictate what happens with it.

Quite, McBalls. The couple who were on op's flight look like proper tools from where I'm standing, and so would anyone else who tried to "claim" it as "theirs". They didn't pay for it ... what makes them think they can bagsy it? And even if they do think they can bagsy it, then the look like proper arses if they would turn down another passenger with a reasonable request to use it.

I think that they benefitted slightly more than you would have.

Therefore, YAB slightly U, even though they sound like arses.

There actions have maximised the total utility of the 2 couples IMO.

Oh, also was it a night flight ?

If you looked like a chatbox from hell and it was a night flight they were DNBU.

I thought it was an unwritten rule if two people have an empty seat in their 3 seat aisle, they automatically have it. I would have thought you rude beyond belief if you started making plans outloud without even asking! I don't get why people think the flight crew - should you have spoken to them - would have made the couple move back just so your husband could take an unassigned seat.

Planes bring out the worst in people - especially me. I'm sure I've been a total asshole on flights before.

To be fair, if DP and I found ourselves with a spare seat on our row we'd think 'result!' especially because DP is 6'5" and all elbows and would probably have responded to OP in the same way .

Actually, if one of the couple had been particularly big/tall I may not have asked for the seat. But they weren't.

cumfy - it was partially a night flight, lights were turned off for about 2-3 hours out of the 9, I think. I don't think I look like a chatbox from hell, honestly don't speak loudly (have been told the opposite, that I speak too quietly) or laugh raucously or anything like that. We weren't constantly talking across the aisle, nor would we have been if he had moved, and we certainly wouldn't have been chatting away when people were sleeping. But then I know me, so it's easy to say that, obviously I don't know how I'd come across to others.

I don't think you had any more right to that seat than they did. If anything, if the extra seat was in their row, I'd say that gave them first dibs

I don't think it's that big a deal to spend an extra 9 hours with your DP, when you have the rest of your life to chat to him